Weird problem with program monitor picture
 

Hi all, my program monitor on CS4 (not sure what its called, the top right by default) has a weird problem. Whenever I play something on it, the colours appear washed out and different (say like if you put a translucent green box over the video track). The clip returns to normal if selected (ie with the handles around the footage). I will attach screenshots in a moment. Anyone else have this? Thanks.

Here are two screenshots, one of when the problem is in action and another of what happens when the clip is selected. Also I might add that the footage is fine when exported.

When you "play" the footage I believe Premiere is switching to an overlay mode - so my guess would be that there's a video card driver issue with the overlay. Do you have the latest drivers installed (or vise versa - does it happen with older drivers also)?

What kind of footage is this - avi, mpeg, Cineform?

Thanks for the response. The latest video drivers appear to be installed on my computer. I haven't tried this with all formats, but it appears to happen regardless of what format footage it is. So far I have just been experimenting after getting CS4 so I do not have any additional footage to try.

Anyone else have advice?

At the top right of the program monitor, there's a triangular flyout...
Check to see the playback quality option...There should be Draft, Automatic, and best...
Perhaps draft is selected??

But yes, my other guess would be video card driver issues..

Good luck!!!

Hmm, doesn't seem to be it. It displays this regardless of the quality mode.

Shot in the dark Colin.......

But i noticed that you've got a PAL framesize for the bars, yet i'm under the impression you're working in an NTSC timeline...

Is it possible that you're mixing an matching different colour profiles from PAL to NTSC?

Reinstalled video card drivers, no change.

Peter, as far as I can tell the bars have the same settings as the project.
Thanks for your help, hope I don't have to try reinstalling Premiere...

This is likely caused by strange settings for your video overlay. If you go into the advancced settings for your graphics card, you should be able to tweak the brightness, contrast, gamma, etc. Try reseting to defaults first. Tweak from there. The results of those changes aren't always apparent until you reboot the program.

Didn't work either, thanks for trying though...so now I know it actually probably is an overlay issue, where can I go from here?

edit: tried reinstalling premiere, no luck
also, I am running a centrino 2 2.4ghz processor, 1gb ram, and the mobile Intel X4500MHD graphics card if that helps

Some questions (searching for clues): What operating system and video card are you using? Do you have a single monitor or multiple ones? Do you have any video codec packs, or video hardware (like a Matrox card) installed? Did you/do you have a previous version of Premiere installed (and if so did it work OK?)

Edit: sorry didnt see your edit above about your graphics card.

Hi Graham, the OS is XP Pro SP3 on a ThinkPad X200 laptop - no hardware, single monitor, and I believe I've got the K-Lite Codec Pack on here. Also if it matters VLC. Thanks for your time!

Hey Colin....

I've always distrusted codec packs....
I'd personally get rid of it, and only install necessary codecs, as per job requirements.

Good luck!!!

I agree! That K-lite codec pack would be very high on my index of suspicion (just because those weird colors look a lot like video info is being misinterpreted ... suggesting an issue with the either the videocard drivers or the codec).

Do you get that effect playing back with any other software - Virtualdub, Windows mediaplayer etc?

The problem is that Premiere's overlay is a bit "different" from the overlay in, say, Windows Mediaplayer ...I'm not really sure how it works.

So far I have only gotten it in Premiere, thanks for the advice everyone I will try uninstalling the codecs and see what happens!

Hi Colin............
 

Can't say as I can see how it's a Codec problem (tho' prepared to be proved wrong).

If it can get it right under some circumstances (which it does) and not in others, then the codecs can't be doing it - they don't change once installed.

My guess is some esoteric setting in the program itself.

Not having that software myself I can't even delve into it's bowels to find it, but my guess is sommat (a colour level) is getting inverted/ subtracted under certain circumstances.

Quite why it would find colour inversion/ subtraction a necessity or under what circumstances it would be usefull, that's what it appears to be doing.

Have you tried Adobe support?


cs

Chris, looks like you're right - I uninstalled the codecs and the problem remains. I should also note that I tried in Vegas Pro and there are no problems there. In addition, the source monitor does not display anything - its always a black screen although audio is played back.

Whoa.......................
 

Back up a moment.

Source monitor?

Colin, can you outline just what you have there - what's connected to what and where, sort of thing.

What graphics card do you have?


CS

Chris, maybe my premiere terminology is bad but I meant the window top centre, to the left of the program monitor. In the screenshots posted earlier you can see there is no content displayed there.

EDIT: never mind, the source monitor is now working although the colour problem persists in both windows
EDIT 2: i guess i said that too soon, it stopped working again...I should also note that for both monitors, changing the display mode to anything other than Composite Video will work. The issues only surface when in Composite Video mode.

My graphics card is the integrated Intel X4500MHD, not ideal for editing I know, but I get by OK with it.Thanks for your support so far!

Colin:
Yes, it sounds like a video card issue. Did you happen to adjust the Playback Settings to see if you could fix your issues? (attached screenshot) The Aspect Ratio Conversion and Disable Video Output look particularly intriguing.

HTH,
Brian Brown

Brian, thanks for the tip although it did not work. This is getting frustrating...

Er, still don't understand...
 

what you have there.

Do you have one or two (or more), physically distinct monitors plugged into one or two (or more) different holes in the back of your graphics card/slot/ thing, or one physical screen with a load of windows all over it pretending to be multiple screens?

How much memory does that graphics chipset have?

What is the connection type of whatever screens you do have? HDMI? DVI? Component? Composite? (surely not?).

I cannot make any sense of the "Composite" comment - who in their right mind uses Composite for video editing? (and if everything works fine if not using it - well, guess you aughta not use it, or is that being too simplistic?).

I'm afraid, Colin, there's so many gaps in my understanding of your setup, I cannot in all seriousness give you any help.

Give us a hint.


CS

@C.S.: "composite" is just a Premiere Pro term. It's actually the RGB output to his program and source monitor (as opposed to waveform, vectorscope, etc.)

@Colin: I still think your video card overlay on your laptop is to blame. Since your card is a shared memory device, does your BIOS give any settings to RAM usage, "aperture", etc. given to the card? IF so, play around with these settings and see if it helps, makes worse, etc.

I know you said you have the latest drivers, but have you gone so far as to disable your graphics card in Device Manager and force a reboot/reload of the latest drivers? Sometimes some rouge DLL file can cause issues.

I just think that there's some combo of settings that's garbling your overlay. Do you have a VGA or DVI port you can hook a second monitor into... play with the driver settings and create a cloned or multiple display resolution display to see if your CS4 overlay issues are the same?

HTH,
Brian Brown

Hi Brian, my BIOS options are fairly simplistic, nothing about those options available unfortunately. I have tried reinstalling my graphics drivers to no avail, but I will try hooking it up to my TV to test.

Chris, sorry for the confusion. I am simply editing on my laptop using the built in LCD and no external monitors. My graphics card has 512MB of VRAM and any connections to external monitors are made through VGA.

In a strange new development I was testing again and the monitors worked perfectly...once. In disbelief, I restarted Premiere Pro and alas the problem returned. This was still on my laptop and I thought I would mention it in case it ruled out any possibilities.

Colin, any chance that there's a BIOS update available for your laptop? I did this a week ago on my fairly-new HP HDX18 laptop and it resolved a few issues.

HTH,
Brian

I think my BIOS is up tp date, I had just installed an update last week.

Sorry if I'm sounding a bit impatient, but would anyone like to chip in with extra advice or ideas? Thanks and great support so far Brian, Chris, and others!

Colin, just curious if you're on 4.0.0 or 4.0.1?

Also, have you tried undocking the monitors and moving them to other parts of your display? Something else to try is closing the monitors and re-opening them in the Window> menu.

These are truly shots in the dark, though... your display driver is not properly handling the overlay signal from CS4. Any chance you could give a screenshot of your control panel settings (Nvidia, etc.) These often have cloning settings, multiple resolutions, and (hopefully) some control over the overlay settings, hardware acceleration, etc.

-Brian Brown

I was on 4.0 but updated a couple days ago with the same issue present. Moving and closing the monitors didn't help either, and unfortunately my display drivers don't have such settings.

EDIT: never mind that, I managed to solve the problem by reducing hardware acceleration (through the Windows interface) to the second-last notch.

I know this is not an optimum solution, so can anyone think of any workarounds to this? Thanks so much for your input.